When attempting to drive traffic to your website, generally an e-commerce website or conversion based site, many site owners wonder which is better, SEO or PPC? The answer is simple – “it depends.” There are a number of factors that determine which avenue is best for your site, however, most great websites employ a little bit of both. Below are some questions to ask yourself before deciding how much of your marketing budget to put towards Natural Search Engine Optimization or Pay Per Click.

How Much Time do I have?
If you are looking to drive traffic immediately, it would be wise to put a few extra dollars towards pay per click. Although natural search engine optimization will eventually drive a significant portion of traffic to your site, the strategies and methods needed to obtain this traffic can take anywhere from 3-6 months to fully develop. Pay per click is an effective method of driving traffic immediately – as long as you are willing to spend money.

Is the market growing, dying, or stagnant?
This is very important no matter what kind of marketing you are engaging in. When marketing products or services online, it is very important to know how much competition you are dealing with. Websites that rank well organically, for the most part, have spent quite a bit of time building up value and authority in the eyes of the search engines. If your market is declining, by the time you gain this authority and begin to rank well for certain top keywords, the market might not even exist. You will also find less competition in the PPC avenue if the market is declining, making it a great opportunity to increase impressions and drive traffic. If the market is growing, it is best to be one of the first sites to develop organic search engine authority before the barriers to enter your market are so low that thousands or even millions of sites are trying to market similar products or services.

Do I have a recognizable brand?
In PPC, more than natural search engine results, a recognizable brand name is vital. A growing number of visitors are able to determine the difference between an organic search listing and a paid search listing. As a result, users tend to put more trust in an organic listing when the company or brand is not very well known than a paid listing. This does not mean that PPC is not an effective means of gaining impressions with your brand name; just do not expect your click through rate to be astronomical at the onset. Over time, once your ads have been viewed a few times or if users have seen your listing organically, they will build up more trust, making it more likely that they will click on one of your paid listings.

It is always recommended that a website have both a strong natural search optimization strategy, as well as a strong PPC budget, in order to capture both segments of the market. Evaluating your company, your goals, and your market will give you a better understanding on which areas could use a little more attention.